August 21, 2016 — We now have enough regulations on the subject of employer wellness programs to make your head spin. EEOC recently released final regs for wellness programs to comply with the ADA, GINA, and ACA. Some in the wellness industry complain that it’s too hard now to penalize people with chronic diseases for failing to make themselves […]
August 20, 2016 — Oops. McDonald’s has been giving out free activity trackers to encourage kids to burn calories. In return, the company received more attention for burned skin than burned calories. McDonald’s swiftly removed the trackers from its Happy Meals when photos of burned wrists started going viral on the internet tubes. We’re going to miss those adorable Step-It activity […]
August 19, 2016 — Healthful eating, if you find it at Whole Foods, can definitely be expensive. Folks from Harvard and Brown Universities say healthful food costs about $1.50 more per day than junk food. They base their assertions on a 2013 analysis published in BMJ Open. But like so many other questions in nutrition, the answer depends on how you ask […]
August 18, 2016 — In scientific advisories, obscurity and equivocation abound more than clarity. So the latest advisory from the American Heart Association (AHA) provides more elegant advice than most: “sit less and move more.” True, the advisory goes on for 11 pages before it gets to that punch line. But at least it has a punch line. Here’s the thing. […]
August 17, 2016 — Self help literature is full of advice for living in the moment. But when it comes to shaping better dietary patterns, planning ahead, not choosing in the moment, makes for better eating. If you want to understand why, look to the marketers who devote their careers to understanding how to prompt the impulse to consume. […]
August 16, 2016 — Bariatric surgery is clearly the most effective option for reversing type 2 diabetes, but for many people, it’s tough to make that leap. So the quest is on to find a less intimidating treatment that delivers the same benefits. A new study in Diabetes Care points to resurfacing the duodenum as a promising possibility. The […]
August 15, 2016 — The annual meeting of the AADE offered much to like, but a scientific session on sweeteners belongs at the top of the list. Claudia Shwide-Slavin and Alan Barclay gave a concise tour of science and fiction about this sweet stuff that worries the Puritans among us. They had us from the start with a smart list of […]
August 14, 2016 — At the very time that more than 3,000 Certified Diabetes Educators are gathering for their association’s annual meeting in San Diego, a new study documents the effectiveness and empowerment that CDEs can provide for people living with type 2 diabetes. In a randomized controlled trial, Michael Bowen and colleagues assigned 150 adults with type 2 diabetes […]
August 13, 2016 — Patient voices have been steadily rising in medical research and health policy since the mid 1990s, when people with HIV rose up to demand a place at the table in AIDS research. But a glaring exception, until recently, has been obesity research and policy. Writing in the Tennessean, patient advocate Neely Williams explains: As an African-American […]
August 12, 2016 — UThree years after the AMA decided that obesity is a chronic disease, have we seen progress in addressing obesity? Earlier this year, Arya Sharma commented that “The U.S. has made remarkable progress in policy recognition of obesity as a disease.” In a new paper to be published in Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics, Ted Kyle, Emily […]
